


for tonight you're only here to know

by violetlolitapop



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: (shrug emoji), 18 years later and i'm still writing fic to her music, Assumed Unrequited Love, M/M, also a band au i guess, always a dancer yuuri, but i don't remember exactly why, except for me cos it's my birthday and ima treat myself, flannel + vodka was a band name i came up with because gay reasons, him phichit and guanghong have a burlesque troupe going, i fell in love with brody dalle when i was 10, i've had the same song on repeat for 3 days while writing this help, stupid boys who love each other and won't talk to each other, the punk au no one asked for, their dicks touch before their hearts do, victor plays guitar
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-06 22:24:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,710
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11045562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetlolitapop/pseuds/violetlolitapop
Summary: The first time Yuuri meets Victor, during a friends gig and lost in the trance of slamming into others, he comes out of it with his heart soaring and a new number in his phone.The second time Yuuri meets Victor, after not seeing each other for what felt like years, he comes out of it with tears running down his face and the impulse to self-destruct.(or: In which two young punks who don't know how to talk to each other go from fuckbuddies-to-exes-to-lovers.)





	for tonight you're only here to know

**Author's Note:**

> an actual conversation that happened:
> 
> friend: yo did you name this thing after the song you sang for jess back in portland?  
> me: ... i don't pay you to bring up the things my old gay ass has done.  
> friend: you've never payed me to beta fic, fuck off.

The I.C.H. is a grungy underground bar that doesn’t promote itself, but is always jammed pack with drunks, punks, and the bands they listen to.

Its entrance isn’t even on the boulevard; the only way to get to it is by going into a wide berthed alley and by forcing open the wrought iron fence that blocks off the staircase going _down down down._ Luckily, the fence is usually kept wide open the later it is, and the alley isn’t empty or dimly lit. It’s still pretty intimidating though, what with the usual crowd standing around for a smoke or some air, generally being loud or violent. Sometimes both.

Yuuri is used to it though. So, walking through the crowds of leather, fishnets, and metal spikes doesn’t do anything to rile up his anxiety. It also helps that he’s wearing all three of these things and doesn’t attract much attention to himself. As far as anyone else is concerned, he’s just another young punk lookin’ for a drink and maybe some music that’ll be good for slamming in the pit.

Which isn’t too far from the truth. It’s been a long week, and he needs to let out some of the frustrations that have been building up inside of him before he ends up having a panic attack. He also wants to see Yuuko. It’s been awhile since they’ve actually talked to each other face to face. The last time he was here it had just been Takeshi and Minami running things.

Yuuri ends up passing through a cloud of smoke that smells like the kind of weed that seeps through the air vents from the apartment and it stings at his eyes. He squints through it though, he hates the feeling of contacts already and doesn’t want to make it worse by rubbing at them. He has to push past people coming up the stairs while going down and he can already feel the vibrations of too loud music rock through his body.

The place is near packed, but not as bad as it could be, which is weird for a Saturday night, but it might just be because it’s still a little early. Things usually pick up after midnight, but hopefully he’ll be lost in a pit before the thought of too many people pushing into him throws him off from what he came here for.

At the bar, he sees Minami running back and forth between customers and Takeshi is on the far side mixing vodka and cranberry juice. No Yuuko though. It doesn’t stop Yuuri from going over, and he ends up in front of Minami who instantly starts to fawn over him. 

“Yuuri! You drinkin’ tonight?!”

His smile is always large and honest when directed at Yuuri, and tonight is no different. Though his forehead is sweaty from the body heat that must be creeping around him, making the bar pierced through his eyebrow blend in with how shiny his whole face is. He's even thrown off his trademarked leather vest that's been frayed and patched to hell to just work in a threadbare Black Flag shirt.

He might not be the person he came down to see specifically, but Minami is still a friend and a pretty good one at that, so seeing him still does put Yuuri in a good mood. He leans over the counter so he doesn't have to shout as loud, but the band is going hard and the music still makes it hard for him to not shout his reply, “Not tonight!”

He might seriously drink later when Phichit gets out from work, but for now he’s good with running sober.

“Is Yuuko here?!” he shouts. "I don't see her!"

“No! Not tonight!” Minami jerks his thumb over where Takeshi is now dishing out cups of beer to a group. “The triplets have a stomach bug, so she’s giving Takeshi the night off to take care of them! They’ve been puking on him all week!”

“Well, that’s nice of her at least,” Yuuri laughs. “I wanted to talk to her, though!”

Minami opens his mouth to say something back, but he’s interrupted by a girl in a white tank and red flannel tied around her waist. Her short red bob brushes against Yuuri's cheek as she leans over the counter to get Minami's attention. She orders three shots of Smirnoff and throws him a wink for good measure. It works, Minami flushes at the attention and apologizes to Yuuri for going back to work.

Yuuri laughs and waves him off. He goes down to the other side and slides in between a few of the customers there and flags down Takeshi when he passes by. He leans further over the counter a bit so that he doesn’t have to shout as loud as he had with Minami.

“I hear the kids are sick,” he says instead of an actual hello.

“They’re puking everywhere,” the other man tells him and shakes his head. “Every. Where.”

“My condolences.”

“Thanks. Say a prayer for my wife though, she’s the one taking care of them right now.”

“I figured, I didn’t see her when I came down. I wanted to talk to her, it’s been so long!”

“It’s busy tonight, anyway. Probably wouldn’t have been able to say much.”

As if to prove his point, a gruff looking man in black tank and plaid pants pushes Yuuri a little out of the way and asks for a drink. Takeshi doesn’t even hesitate to go about filling up another cheap plastic cup with the man’s choice of brand and slides it over to him. Yuuri scoots over again, as much as he can, when he feels the man’s brush against the small of his back and gives him more room.

It’s always so cramped in this place.

Yuuri doesn’t even pay attention to him as he leaves, his focus is on Takeshi who comes back to him and asks, “What are you up to tonight?”

“Phichit works upstairs now,” he tells him. “Did you know that? Well, I was gonna surprise him and treat him to a drink after his first night and thought I’d come down and see all my friends before that.”

“Really? Do I know them?”

Takeshi only laughs and dodges an empty cup that Yuuri throws at him.

“Here,” he says to Yuuri and fills up a clean cup with beer. “One on the house. Don’t get too crazy, just enjoy the music.”

“I don’t even know who’s playing,” Yuuri confesses, but takes the drink anyway.

Takeshi slides him a flyer that had been left on the counter and used as a coaster again and again. There’s wet rings from the glasses that have been put down on it and it’s already begun to melt away at the edges. He’s able to read it well enough. That pretty much signals the end of their conversation though. Just like with Minami, Takeshi is soon over taken by a new wave of people demanding service and falls away into the flow of work, and Yuuri moves away from the bar before more hands keep brushing over him in an attempt to get to the alcohol can happen.

He ends up pressed against a bare space of wall, just off to the side and scans the flyer while gulping down his drink.

Yuuri doesn’t know any of the bands that are playing tonight. He scans the list – _Kitty Nipples, The Almighty Cock Goblin, Flannel + Vodka, Drac and the Swamprats –_ and nope, he hasn’t heard of any of them. To be fair, he hasn’t been involved much in the local music scene. Not since…

Well, the point is that the last year has seen him trying to keep the troupe going. It’s been hard since their regular venue closed down and they’ve been jumping from place to place, trying to find a routine. It’s only from a bit of luck really, that they’ve been able to find some kind of stability and make that extra income they need. That reminds him, he really needs to pay Leo back for that soundtrack he mixed him, it’s not fair to just use his work and not give him something in return. Just because they’re friends doesn’t mean that would be okay for him to do.

That’s something to be thought of during the day though. Yuuri slings back the rest of his beer and leaves the cup on a bit of ledge. He tells himself he’ll come back to pick it up, but at the same he knows that he’s doing to forget about it until way later and silently apologizes to Yuuko for it.

There’s this common misconception that dancing at a punk show is unheard of. There is dancing, maybe not conventional dancing, but it’s there. It’s in the center of the mosh pit where the spinning and running never ends, where half the bodies are crouched over and slumped and people are diving head first into others, and where hands are thrown in every direction to keep the contact going and slamming alive. It’s in the front of the stage where the ones closest to the music are lost and hopping back and forth, side to side, pogoing with their hands up and throwing stage divers off and away. It’s in the very back where those more on the outside are kicking their feet and bobbing their arms, even though there is no ska music, people will always skank outside of it all.

Yuuri never skanks without Phichit, or anyone else for that matter. It just feels awkward to do it alone. That being said, he ends up at the front.

He needs to work up to actually diving into the pit.

The music is fast. The music is loud. He can’t make out the lyrics and it doesn’t matter to him. He makes silent friends with the girl in a red flannel tied into a crop top next to him. They share a quick smile and end up bouncing back and forth in sync. He ends up saving her from being near crushed by someone who ended up on stage and tripped over his own boots when trying to dive and fell right off into the front crowd. He grabs her arm, pulls her close to his body and they both move backwards just in time to avoid steel toe to anyone’s head as the man falls over the head first.

“Thanks!” she smiles. “I owe you!”

“It’s fine,” he tells her. “It’s no problem.”

“I’m Sara.”

“Yuuri.”

She laughs. “Our drummer is named Yuri!”

It’s all they say. It’s all their able to, really. The band keeps playing as the hurt man gets dragged out from the crowd and everyone goes back like nothing ever happened. Sara dances with Yuuri for a little longer before the same red head with a bob that he saw earlier comes through the crowd and grabs her by the arm. She says something to her that Yuuri doesn’t hear and doesn’t stop dancing to really listen to anyway.

“I got to go,” Sara says to him when the other disappears back into the crowd. “Nice to meet you!”

“You too!”

It really was.

That’s usually how interactions go at something like this. Brief friendships that never last more than a few hours, and if he’s honest, after the last long term… “friendship” that happened because of a show, Yuuri prefers it this way.

(There’s a bubble that threatens to form in his chest. It’s something that comes and goes, fewer now that the time between now and _that day_ stretches on, but some things just threaten to bring it back to life. He squashes it. Doesn’t let it take life. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t need to think about him.)

Yuuri loses himself back in the music, in the atmosphere and lets all of the tension and stress from the week out. The only break in between is when the band ends their set and they eventually need to break down their equipment. Yuuri goes back to the bar for a drink. One or two before he actually meets up with Phichit wouldn't hurt.

There is significantly less people around the counter, but it’s still crowded, all the same. He’s able to flag Minami down and ask for his usual.

“How’s it like in the pit?” he asks Yuuri.

“Haven’t gone in it yet,” Yuuri replies and downs half the beer in one go. “I need a break from the front though, I think I’m gonna hit that next.”

“Just don’t get hit in the face again. I’ll jump in to save you if I have to, but still.”

“The only reason it got that bad that one time is because I was wearing my glasses and I couldn’t see the other fists coming when they got knocked off!”

“It was pretty fun to watch your sister dive in there to save you, though. That was so cool, the way she elbowed that dude’s tooth out. I wanna be able to do that one day.”

“You’ve been hanging out with her too much,” he says and sips at his beer. “I thought I was your favorite.”

“You are! But Mari is a force to be reckon with, ya gotta admit.”

Well, yeah, she is. He should actually give her a call, it’s been a while since they’ve done more than just send ugly selfies of each other through snapchat.

The next band starts their set up. Yuuri can’t really tell who they are, only that every one of them is wearing some form of red flannel. It’s hard to see what some of them even look like as one of them has one of those vest that comes with a hood and has it up over their head, and the other has a mop of blond hair covering most of their face, but he does recognize the red head again, and standing next to her with a bass is Sara. She did say something about their drummer to him, but he’s honestly surprised to see that she’s in one of them playing tonight. He didn’t expect that.

“Hey, I met that one girl right there,” he tells Minami and points to Sara on stage. “She was out in the front. I have no idea who her band is.”

“They’re the ones called Flannel + Vodka,” he says. “They just started playing around here. New band, broke out into the scene maybe like a month or two ago. We had to kick them out the first time they played cos their drummer dove off the stage and started beating a guy with his sticks.”

“Poor guy.”

“It was JJ.”

“Oh. Nevermind, then.”

“Yuuri!”

“No one gets to talk that loudly over Phichit performing and gets my forgiveness that easily.”

“You two really are ride ‘n’ die, huh?”

“You really have been hanging out with my sister too much.”

There’s a sudden burst of feedback and literally everyone makes to cover their ears. Groans and swearing rift through the bar and the red head starts to smack at her guitarist.

“Sorry,” she shouts out into the crowd. “Someone was being an asshole!”

She says this while directly looking at the hooded figure, who in turn slouches to one side and gives her a half-hearted shrug. Their back is to the audience, but they must be making some kind of face if the way she rolls her eyes says anything about it.

(Something about the way this person shrugs reminds him so much of someone he would rather not think about, and _clearly_ he should not have come down here tonight because apparently it’s going to be one of _those_ nights.)

Yuuri turns away from the stage then, he goes back to talking with Minami whenever he was a spare chance to chat in between serving the next round of customers that are taking advantage of the stage set up to get more booze. Eventually, the music starts up again, a slow tempo that promises a buildup and the energy of the bar starts to climb.

“We’re Flannel + Vodka,” Yuuri hears the red head again, shouting into her mic, “and everyone on this stage is gay, so you’re all gay by association!”

“They’re always like that,” Minami tells Yuuri over the sporadic cheers of the crowd. “Last time she screamed something about vodka being gay culture and we sold out that night. It’s good sometimes.”

Yuuri laughs. “Anything that helps make some money is worth it, I guess. I’m gonna join the pit on this one, they sound fun!”

“They are! Have a good time out there!”

Minami waves him off and Yuuri slips away to enjoy his night.

The pit is still small when he joins. There’s only a couple of other girls and a few guys pushing through the circle and slamming into each other so he ends up following the pattern easy enough.

The best part of it is that he doesn’t need to think, and for once his brain finally listens to him and shuts down for a few moments. The only thing that matters is the thrum of the music and the constant pushing. Phichit made a comment once, a long time ago, about Yuuri’s lonesome nature and how that might have something to do with him enjoying slamming since there’s a constant need to push people away.

Yuuri remembers telling him that it wasn’t really that deep, but then Guang Hong said something about art analysis being key to certain truths and a bunch of popcorn was thrown all over the place soon after.

One of the problems that comes with it though, is that when he really loses himself in it, he doesn’t pay attention much to his surroundings. It’s how that flying snowcone some dickwad threw at them smashed into his face and knocked off his glasses, and  it’s why Mari had to dive in to save him from being trampled after being elbowed down to the ground. It’s how he ended up slightly caught on fire after someone threw a flaming tennis ball through the crowd for whatever reason. It’s how he ended up being tossed in the air by that one weight lifter and she dropped him over a hedge fence and into a rose bush. It’s how he met…

No.

Not tonight.

He’s not going to think about him tonight.

Instead, he lets the music take over his body, doesn’t really watch where he’s going, only that he follows the bodies in front of him and _pushes pushes pushes_ everyone away.

(Phichit might be on to something with what he said, but damn it all Yuuri is never going to even _entertain_ the thought.)

It’s a testament to how dedicated the people in this pit are that they don’t slow down, not even when a song ends. They just keep going, keep moving, slowing down but picking right back up with the tempo again. They don’t even stop when there are sudden screams and cheers from the front and no one notices a stage diver, which is actually the band’s leading guitarist, being moved in their general direction.

This never happens, but it seems like with the attempt to keep playing while being bounced up and down over a sea of hyped (and possibly drunk) people, everyone has just lost their sense of direction. The drummer goes harder, drowns out the cut off lyrics that turned into the singer just yelling at her guitarist and the pit feeds on that, not even realizing it’s not part of the song. People that were once outside of it though are now being forced into it and breaking up the momentum. Some of them snap out of the haze and realize that something is going awry and make a break for it. Yuuri is not one of these people, but even him and the rest are forced to stop once too much shouting disrupt them and the first thing that happens is a guitar is tossed near them all and causes more than just a few of them to trip over each other.

Yuuri gets pushed out of rhythm and more towards where the commotion is happening as others are scrambling to get away. He turns sharply to see what is going on, just in time to lock his eyes with a pair of bright baby blues looking at him from the person that is literally being thrown at him.

And then a steel-toed boot is meeting with his forehead and he’s down.

His first thought, as he’s lying on this questionably sanitary floor, is that he’s glad he didn’t wear his glasses.

His second thought is not so much as a thought as it is a gasp because there is no way that his is happening to him right now.

Standing over him, with a look of disbelief, is the one person he never thought he would see again. With his hoodie forced back, there’s no denying it. He’d never confuse eyes like that, or mistake a profile like that, or see those same silver rings lining the outside of his right ear, or mussed up hair…

Oh…

Victor cut his hair…

“Yuuri?”

He shouldn’t even be able to hear him say his name. The music cut off after the collision, but they’re still surrounded by several people speaking loudly and shouting from the bar, and Vcitor doesn't say his name as much as gasp it like he's the one awed by this scenario. Yuuri doesn’t know if it’s Minami or Takeshi that’s yelling because all he can really focus on is that lack of long hair that he used to tug ( _when they would tease each other_ ) and play with ( _like that one time they watched movies and cuddled, legitimately cuddled_ ) and how it’s not there.

“Your hair is short.”

Victor’s hand shoots up to touch his hair and his eyes are wide. Yuuri resists the urge to knock himself out, because now he realizes just how utterly ridiculous that after not seeing one another for more than a year or so, this is the very first thing he says to him.

“Victor! You asshole!”

It’s the red head again, screaming from the stage and fixing Victor with a vicious glare.

“I told you to stop doing that!”

Victor does that shrug thing that he does and smiles back at her.

“I got caught in the moment!” he shouts back.

Minami reaches Yuuri and helps him up. He asks him if he’s okay and if he can walk back to the bar with him. He ends up throwing Yuuri’s arms over his shoulder to help him walk back, and Victor, without even being asked to help, does the same. Minami ends up shooting him a questioning look.

“Don’t you want get back to your show?” he asks him.

“I play with these jerks all the time,” Victor waves the question off. “They’ll struggle without me, but they’ll be fine.”

The entire band boos at him, but Victor only laughs in return.

“We don’t need him anyway,” Mila says into the mic. “We all know he’s just back up for me.”

Victor flips his finger at her and walks back with Minami holding Yuuri up to the bar. Minami ends up guiding them both to the back wall when it’s clear Yuuri doesn’t have the balance to sit on a stool without anyone worrying about him falling over. He tells Victor to keep him propped up and tells them both that he’s going to grab some ice for his head. Yuuri really, really, _really_ wishes he didn’t just leave him alone with the one person he never wanted to be in the same room with ever again.

Victor, with his brow sweaty and the familiar ( _missed_ ) scent of coffee and cigarettes coming off from him like it always did (does), takes Yuuri’s face into his hands and Yuuri just really wants to cry. He’s blinking a lot, trying to calm his heart beat and keep his breathing steady, and it takes him a second to realize that Victor’s staring at the throbbing part of his forehead and frowning.

“It’s gonna leave a nasty bruise,” he says. “I’m sorry about that.”

One hand moves further up and his finger prods against it and Yuuri flinches back. He almost crashes his head up against the wall, but Victor is quick to hold him steady. This only makes him want to break away from his hold even more.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

He’s looking at Yuuri now, eyes locked and everything.

“You’re back,” Yuuri says, breathless.

He hates himself; for the second time in the span of not even five minutes he’s saying things that aren’t relevant at all to what’s being said to him and he really wishes the floor would open up to swallow him whole. Victor, on the other hand, blinks, confused. Not for very long though, because soon he’s smiling and it’s almost like before.

Almost.

“You really knew I was away?” he asks, and looks like a kid on Christmas.

Yuuri can feel his face redden. He wills it back though, as best as possible anyway, and says, “Well, I hadn’t seen you around in a while, so… y’know?”

“Really?” Victor cocks his head and leans in closer. He’s not touching Yuuri anymore, but now he’s got an arm resting against the wall behind him, nearly trapping Yuuri and if anything, this feels more confining then literally being held. “Y’know, I think I remember my cousin telling me something about you coming by the store to look for me awhile back.”

Yuuri tries to shrug off that unsaid accusation, tries to play it off coolly like he’s ever been cool in his entire life. “That must’ve been a real while back, I don’t remember that all. I was probably just wandering around the neighborhood. Passing by, or something.”

“Just passing by? In Long Beach?”

There is screaming going off in his head.

“Phichit,” he says suddenly. “Phichit must’ve had rehearsal at the art theater. I was there with him, sometimes I went with him. But I, I didn’t want to get in the way. So, I left. I did that a lot.”

Victor’s smile falls off. The teasing light that was shining in those bright blue eyes of his fades away as well and a small corner of his mouth tugs down.

“How is Phichit?” He asks the question like it’s forced out of him, not like he’s genuinely curious about Yuuri’s friend at all. “Still, y’know, living together and whatever? That same apartment and everything?”

“Uh, yeah. Yeah. We’re still… We’re still there. Same apartment, same everything. Nothing’s really changed, not too much.”

“Good.”

He says it like it’s not good at all, and not for the first time does Yuuri feel confused around him. This was one feeling he really could have done without reliving.

“That’s good.”

He keeps saying that: It’s _good_ that Phichit is still in Yuuri’s life like there would ever be a reason for his best friend to _not_ be in it. He knows that him and Phichit were never actually friends, what with their relationship being what it was and all, and Phichit constantly being on guard and distrusting Victor’s intentions when it became clear that there wasn't ever going to be anything _more_ to their relationship, but Yuuri has never understood the animosity between them.

He never understood why Victor could never be more than just civil around Phichit, why he could never try to be the charming person he won people over with during their _not-_ relationship.

“Victor…” Yuuri trails off. He doesn’t know what he was going to say, if he’s honest. It’s like an impulse, to always call after him.

He hates that.

Victor doesn’t say anything. Not at first. He takes him time in looking Yuuri over and it leaves him feeling vulnerable, but not enough to fidget and do anything like tug at the edge of his shirt that must be riding up to show off the bit of extra weight he’s gained. He knew he had when he slipped this pair of jeans on and felt the fabric around the thighs stretch out just a little too much and now the screaming keeps going off on his head.

“This is kinda like the first time we met,” he finally says. “Huh?”

Yuuri feels that bubble rise up again and he can’t stop it. In a manner of seconds, it expands until it’s too full and explodes everywhere, letting every little emotion he’s been suppressing to latch on to a piece of him and never let go. He needs to get out of this conversation.

He doesn’t really want to remember that night.

He doesn’t really want to remember _any_ of the nights they’ve had.

“I-I don’t even really remember that,” he lies. “To be honest.”

There’s a beat of silence between them before Victor’s arm falls away from the wall. “Really?”

“Yeah. It was a long time ago, y’know?

Victor stares at him, and for a second, Yuuri thinks that he sees through the lie. Like he doesn’t believe Yuuri could ever forget that night.

(He’s right, but dammit, Yuuri is going to act his best right now to make it seem like he’s never had an effect on him or die right here on this bar floor trying.)

Eventually, he looks away from Yuuri. He nods his head and mutters, “Yeah. Yeah, it was a long time ago.”

Yuuri can see his jaw clench – Victor always had a great jawline, he remembers pressing his lips against it over and over and over and he needs to stop – and wonders why he’s getting such a passive aggressive response. The air between starts to grow tenser the longer the quiet stretches between them, but luckily it doesn’t last. Minami shows up with a towel full of ice and holds it up Yuuri’s forehead where he can feel the swelling start up.

“Looks like you’re all taken care of,” says Victor and he steps away. “I’ll see y’around.”

Victor doesn’t wait for Yuuri to reply. He turns away sharply and goes back to the crowd.

He leaves.

(Just like before.)

Doesn’t look back.

(Just like before.)

“Yuuri?”

Yuuri only snaps his eyes away from watching Victor's back disappear when Minami calls after him. He doesn't even know what his face looks like, but it can't be good with the worried looks he's getting from his friend.

“Does it hurt that bad?” Minami asks. “You’re crying.”

He didn’t even realize that he had started crying. He brings his hand up to swipe at the track of tears he only not begins to feel. He needs to get rid of them. He needs to erase any proof that seeing Victor again made this much of an impact on him.

The very thought makes him laugh, sounding like he’s on the verge of hysterics and he’s never been happier to have the music go harder and louder to drown him out. Minami is beyond concerned at this point and looks like he’s at a total loss of what to do. Yuuri stops him from speaking when he opens his mouth to no doubt ask another question.

He can’t deal with this right now.

“It’s just like last time,” Yuuri says and grimaces.

Pathetic.

He’s so pathetic.

“Yuuri?”

“I need to go.”

“Yuuri?!”

Yuuri pushes Minami away. He tells him he’s fine, he’ll text him when he gets home. He’ll be fine.

He’ll be fine.

He’ll be fine.

He’ll be fine.

He’s fine.

He’s fine.

He’s fine.

There’s an unattended bottle of who knows what that no one is watching and Yuuri swipes it on his way out. He chugs the whole thing down the whole way up the staircase, not even caring if he unintentionally elbowed a person or three who were making their own way down. The liquor burns his throat and he can barely even feel it over the overwhelming anxiety that has taken over him. It’s a wonder that he’s still even able to hold the bottle with all the shaking that his hands are doing.

He ends up throwing the glass against the wall on the other side of the alley, doesn’t pay any attention to the angry shouts from people that were standing close to where it shattered and stalks off back to the boulevard. He needs another drink, but he’s not going back down there. Nope, he’s going far far far away from here.

The restaurant where Phichit started working is still open, and Yuuri doesn’t even know what time it is, and honestly, he forgets that his whole reason for being in this area was to meet up with his friend. It’s a real marvel and a testament to his character, that he’s able to go from starting the night out with the best ideas and end it all with crashing and burning.

It’s not the best idea, but he needs more to drink and bar hopping sounds fantastic. If he’s lucky maybe he can find someone to take him home just to show him that there are people out there who find him enticing enough to love even if just for one night.

If there’s any semblance of rational thought going through his mind that he’s acting just a bit on the dramatic side, he neither hears it or recognizes it. Once he has an idea in his head, he’s going to follow through. He has to. He just has to.

It's the only thing that gets him through the door of the bar on the next block.

(When morning comes, Yuuri wakes up in a stranger’s bed with cotton in his head and the driest mouth. It’s what he wanted, when he thinks about it after throwing his clothes on and leaving in record time without even looking at the person next to him and he ends up in the middle of the early morning commuters.)

(Doesn’t make him feel any better, but it’s what he wanted.)

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this for my birthday. it's not my birthday today, that's on the 15th, but this fic is my gift to myself.
> 
> [i also made a spotify playlist for this ](https://open.spotify.com/user/123711700/playlist/7DuGAErBKSMwrreFJOHLGP). i listen to it constantly while closing the bakery and it includes the song this fic is named after because i still think it's a romantic af song.
> 
> i would base mila's band's sound on one that's called tiger pussy. support them on [bandcamp ](https://tigerpussyx.bandcamp.com/album/people-you-hate) and [ spotify ](https://open.spotify.com/artist/3LHcwdQ70rjNgpym5PBk6c).
> 
> the bar i based the one in the fic is nostalgic (i say like i ever went, but god i wish i could've) to [CBGB](https://boogiechillen.files.wordpress.com/2006/12/cbgb3.jpg) hence the initials used for it. the exterior is based off [ a bar in hollywood called no vacancy ](https://www.instagram.com/p/BUyVkDPB1OV/?hl=en)but the interior i think would resemble [ the inside of chain reaction ](http://www.1stdegreeentertainment.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/chain-reaction.jpg)tbh. 
> 
> (i don't have my own video/pic of the inside of that cos i wasn't able to go to my friends show last saturday cos i worked a late shift and lets be honest the last time i was actually in chain reaction was probably like 2009ish???)
> 
> [also drac and the swamp rats is a real band and i think they're pretty fun ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sX913dI37Y). my friend has a crush on one of them, i don't remember which one but it's fun to watch her watch them when we go to their shows lmaoo


End file.
